Some people tout ketamine as a miracle drug for depression, but the truth is not so simple.
."I was terrified when I started this service that we were introducing a medication that would lead to physiologic and psychologic addiction," Dr. Meisner says.
Good candidates are patients who are exhibiting treatment-resistant depression and haven't responded to standard oral medications, Dr. Itzkoff says. These traditional medications typically include selective serotonin inhibitors that have either not worked for them, have caused negative side effects, or have only enacted a partial response.
Patients will typically be monitored for medical and psychiatric evaluation after the infusion is complete. At McLean, new patients are observed for about an hour and a half post-infusion and for slightly shorter periods as they receive more infusions. During this monitoring, their blood pressure, heart rate, mental status, behavior, and critical vital signs are monitored to ensure that the patient is stable, both psychiatrically and medically, says Dr. Meisner.
Ketamine also tends to increase blood pressure, he says. If your blood pressure isn't well controlled — due to poor monitoring at a clinic, for instance — you could be at risk for a heart attack or an aneurysm. In a few rare instances , patients have even died from ketamine treatment. But Dr. Meisner stresses that this tends to happen in poorly regulated environments.
The hope with IV ketamine is"to awaken people to where this misalignment is; it's about getting to the source to be able to see, objectively, where are we out of alignment and help people realign," says Dr. Radowitz.
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